PROJECT SUMMARY The Gordon Research Conference (GRC) on Lasers in Medicine and Biology (LMB) has a long and rich history of inspiring and educating current and future generations of interdisciplinary scientists and engineers. This conference which began in 1965, is respected as one of the premiere meetings for fostering creative research and ideas in biophotonics (science and engineering of light as it applies to medicine and biology). The primary objective of this meeting is to bring together researchers from academia, hospitals and medical clinics, national laboratories, and industry to understand and advance the use of light and lasers in clinical care, as well as fundamental biological discovery. The conference specific aims are (1) to encourage scientific exchange between biophotonics researchers at the cutting-edge of these fields, (2) to critically and collectively address the current state of the field, and its future directions and (3) to strengthen and renew the biophotonics community by promoting close interactions between researchers across all levels with a specific emphasis on students and postdoctoral fellows while ensuring diversity in gender, race and culture. To specifically enhance the participation of graduate students and postdoctoral fellows at our conference, this year, GRC-LMB will be preceded by the inaugural Gordon Research Seminar (GRS) on LMB, a forum organized by students and postdocs for their peers. The theme of the 2018 GRC-LMB is Addressing Unmet Needs and Creating New Opportunities in Biophotonics. Each session will begin with a challenge speaker, typically a clinician in a given discipline, who will present the unmet needs of that discipline and both discussion leaders and remaining speakers to follow have been identified from amongst those researchers who are seeking to address problems directly relevant to this population. We have selected areas that currently have very limited biophotonics research focused in that area, many of which directly align with the mission of the institutes that we seek support from. Survey analysis from the 2016 GRC-LMB showed that the conference was classified as ?High-Performing?, and rated among the highest of all GRCs. We expect that this conference will continue to uphold the tradition of being one of the best venues for our biophotonics community. In this R13 application, we request support towards registration fees and/or travel costs for graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and early career professionals with specific emphasis on increasing the participation of women and under-represented groups at the next GRC-LMB and GRS-LMB to be held July 7-13, 2018 at Bates College, Lewiston, ME. This support will enable us to actively engage intellectual connections between senior-level investigators, junior faculty, postdoctoral fellows and graduate students while increasing the diversity of the participants. The requested funding will undoubtedly ensure a successful, diverse and productive meeting, and provide opportunities that will form the foundation of long-lasting careers in biophotonics for these under-represented groups.